When trying to overwrite another environment with a copy of Prod, the system prevented the operation due to exceeding tenant capacity limits.
This copy operation is subject to environment and storage capacity constraints.
We raised a Microsoft Support Ticket and learned that we can resolve this issue by either purchasing additional storage or requesting free temporary storage to complete the copy operation.
We need to raise another support ticket for temporary storage, that includes below details
The amount of storage we need
The duration for which it should be available
The reason for the request
The maximum duration that can be requested is 6 months.
The maximum storage that can be requested is 200 % of what is purchased.
Thanks to Microsoft, within few mins of raising the support ticket we were provided the additional temporary storage.
We got our environment extended for 6 months with 200 GB additional capacity that allowed us to complete our copy environment.
We tried the AI Form Filling Assistance feature in model-driven Power Apps and found it very helpful. One part that we liked the most was the toolbar and file (preview). This makes it much easier to fill forms using information from uploaded documents.
To enable this feature, go to:
Environment → Settings → Features → Form fill assist toolbar (AI Form Fill Assistance)
Once enabled, we can simply upload or drag and drop a file — like a PDF, Word document, or image — and the assistant will read the file and suggest values for different form fields.
When we upload / drop a file like a PDF, Word, or image, the assistant reads the file and gives us suggestions to fill the form.
For example, if we upload the following file:
We can see that the assistant picks up values like First Name, Last Name, City, and Country, and populates them into our contact record.
Either we can accept all the suggestions using the Accept suggestions button on the tool bar or can select the suggested value for the individual fields by clicking yes next to it.
The assistant works at the tab level. For example, if we switch to the Details tab and upload the same image again, we might see fields like Birthday get populated — depending on what data is available and which fields are present in that tab.
The different file types supported are – .txt, .docx, .csv, .pdf, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .bmp.
Let us now try uploading the below text file.
We can see it picking the first record and populating the details on the form.
This makes it simple and fast to enter data — especially when we are working with leads, contacts, or records that are usually based on data from documents or scanned forms.
With this new update in Power Automate, it’s now easier for us to find and use the actions and connectors we need. We can also quickly access tools and AI features while building flows. This helps save time and makes the flow-building experience smoother.
Here is a screenshot of the new connector and action pane in Power Automate, below we have added Dataverse connector and some of its action as favorites.
Earlier, when we clicked on the plus sign (+) to add a new action in our flow, it opened a big list of actions and connectors. It was hard to find the ones we used often, and we had to scroll a lot.
Now, with the new design, things are much easier. We can do the following:
– Mark any connector or action as a ‘Favorite’. These favorites will always show up at the top in a new Favorites section.
– Quickly see useful AI tools like ‘Run a prompt’ or ‘Process documents’ in a special AI section.
– Easily find basic tools like Control, Data Operation, and JSON under the Built-in tools section.
This change helps us find what we need faster. It’s especially useful if we often use the same connectors like Microsoft Dataverse or Excel.
Recently, we had a requirement to track the Current and Previous contracts for a Contact in our Dataverse environment. To achieve this, we created two separate N:1 relationships between the Contact and Contract tables
custom_currentcontractid → Contact’s Current Contract
Soon after, we noticed a strange issue: “When creating a Contact from a Contract record (via the Quick Create form), both Current Contract and Previous Contract fields were being automatically populated — with the same Contract record”. This was unexpected, especially since neither field was present on the Quick Create form!
After saving and closing, when we open the record, we can see both the lookup auto-populated with the contract record in context.
On adding these lookups in the Quick Create form, we can see that Dataverse is auto-populating it with the contract in context.
When we open a Quick Create form from a record (in our case, from a Contract), Dataverse passes the entity reference context to the Quick Create form. And here’s the catch, If the target entity (Contact) has multiple lookups to the source entity (Contract), Dataverse tries to populate them all.
This behavior is based on relationship metadata, not on what’s visible on the form. So even though we didn’t include the Current Active Contract or Previous Contract on the Quick Create form, Dataverse filled both with the same value.
If we have the fields on the quick create form we can make use of JavaScript on the onload to clear the values.
function clearBothContractLookups(executionContext) {
var formContext = executionContext.getFormContext();
// Check if in Quick Create mode (formType = 1)
if (formContext.ui.getFormType() === 1) {
var parentRecord = formContext.data.entity.getEntityReference();
// If opened from a Contact, clear BOTH lookups
if (parentRecord && parentRecord.entityType === "contact") {
// Clear Current Contract
if (formContext.getAttribute("new_currentcontract")) {
formContext.getAttribute("new_currentcontract").setValue(null);
}
// Clear Previous Contract
if (formContext.getAttribute("new_previouscontract")) {
formContext.getAttribute("new_previouscontract").setValue(null);
}
}
}
}
However, like in our case as we did not have these fields on the quick create form, and we didn’t want to have these populated during the creation of the Contract, as these fields were supposed to be populated later, we wrote a Pre-Create Plugin on Pre Operation for it.
public class ClearBothContractLookups : IPlugin
{
public void Execute(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
IPluginExecutionContext context = (IPluginExecutionContext)serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(IPluginExecutionContext));
if (context.InputParameters.Contains("Target") && context.InputParameters["Target"] is Entity)
{
Entity contact = (Entity)context.InputParameters["Target"];
// Clear BOTH fields if they exist
if (contact.Contains("new_currentcontract"))
contact["new_currentcontract"] = null;
if (contact.Contains("new_previouscontract"))
contact["new_previouscontract"] = null;
// or remove them from the input parameters
contact.Attributes.Remove("new_currentcontract");
contact.Attributes.Remove("new_previouscontract");
}
}
}
}
Recently, while testing in UAT, we ran into a plugin-related issue that wasn’t reproducible in Dev. After investigating, we discovered the root cause: one of the plugin step images was missing an attribute in UAT. This wasn’t immediately obvious and not something we’d catch in a standard deployment check. Manually inspecting each plugin step image across environments would be tedious and error-prone. So, we wrote a quick comparison utility using the Dataverse SDK (C#) to help automate this process. Within the tool, we need to specify the schema name of the table. The tool finds all related the sdkmessageprocessingstepimage records, joins them with associated plugin steps (sdkmessageprocessingstep), and then compares the step, image, and the included attributes.
The result –
We can see it listing a missing plugin registration step in UAT and a mismatch in one of the attributes in a step’s image.
The sample code –
static void Main(string[] args)
{
string devConnectionString = "AuthType=OAuth;Url=https://abcdev.crm6.dynamics.com/;Username=abd@xyz.com;AppId=51f81489-12ee-4a9e-aaae-a2591f45987d;LoginPrompt=Auto;RedirectUri=app://58145b91-0c36-4500-8554-080854f2ac97";
string uatConnectionString = "AuthType=OAuth;Url=https://abcuat.crm6.dynamics.com/;Username=abd@xyz.com;AppId=51f81489-12ee-4a9e-aaae-a2591f45987d;LoginPrompt=Auto;RedirectUri=app://58145b91-0c36-4500-8554-080854f2ac97";
var devService = new CrmServiceClient(devConnectionString);
var uatService = new CrmServiceClient(uatConnectionString);
string entityLogicalName = "custom_contract";
var devDetails = GetPluginStepImages(devService, GetEntityTypeCode(devService, entityLogicalName));
var uatDetails = GetPluginStepImages(uatService, GetEntityTypeCode(uatService, entityLogicalName));
CompareStepsAndImages(devDetails, uatDetails);
Console.ReadLine();
}
static int GetEntityTypeCode(IOrganizationService service, string entityLogicalName)
{
var query = new QueryExpression("entity")
{
ColumnSet = new ColumnSet("objecttypecode", "logicalname"),
Criteria = new FilterExpression(LogicalOperator.And)
};
query.Criteria.AddCondition("logicalname", ConditionOperator.Equal, entityLogicalName);
var response = service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
var entity = response.Entities.FirstOrDefault();
return (int)entity.Attributes["objecttypecode"];
}
static EntityCollection GetPluginStepImages(IOrganizationService service, int objectTypeCode)
{
var query = new QueryExpression("sdkmessageprocessingstepimage")
{
ColumnSet = new ColumnSet("name", "imagetype", "messagepropertyname", "entityalias", "attributes", "sdkmessageprocessingstepid")
};
// Link to sdkmessageprocessingstep
var stepLink = query.AddLink("sdkmessageprocessingstep", "sdkmessageprocessingstepid", "sdkmessageprocessingstepid");
stepLink.Columns = new ColumnSet("name", "sdkmessagefilterid");
stepLink.EntityAlias = "step";
// Link to sdkmessagefilter
var filterLink = stepLink.AddLink("sdkmessagefilter", "sdkmessagefilterid", "sdkmessagefilterid");
filterLink.LinkCriteria.AddCondition("primaryobjecttypecode", ConditionOperator.Equal, objectTypeCode);
return service.RetrieveMultiple(query);
}
static void CompareStepsAndImages(EntityCollection devStepsWithImages, EntityCollection uatStepsWithImages)
{
Console.WriteLine("Comparing Plugin Step / Images between Dev and UAT...");
// Create dictionaries for faster lookup
var devDict = devStepsWithImages.Entities.GroupBy(e =>
{
var stepId = e.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("sdkmessageprocessingstepid")?.Id ?? Guid.Empty;
return stepId;
}).ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g.ToList());
var uatDict = uatStepsWithImages.Entities.GroupBy(e =>
{
var stepId = e.GetAttributeValue<EntityReference>("sdkmessageprocessingstepid")?.Id ?? Guid.Empty;
return stepId;
}).ToDictionary(g => g.Key, g => g.ToList());
foreach (var devStep in devDict)
{
var stepId = devStep.Key;
var devImages = devStep.Value;
var devStepName = devImages.FirstOrDefault()?.GetAttributeValue<AliasedValue>("step.name")?.Value?.ToString() ?? "(unknown)";
if (!uatDict.TryGetValue(stepId, out var uatImages))
{
Console.WriteLine($"[MISSING STEP in UAT] Step: {devStepName}, StepId: {stepId}");
continue;
}
foreach (var devImage in devImages)
{
var devImageName = devImage.GetAttributeValue<string>("name");
var devAttrs = devImage.GetAttributeValue<string>("attributes") ?? "";
var devType = devImage.GetAttributeValue<OptionSetValue>("imagetype")?.Value;
var match = uatImages.FirstOrDefault(u =>
u.GetAttributeValue<string>("name") == devImageName);
if (match == null)
{
Console.WriteLine($"[MISSING IMAGE in UAT] Image: {devImageName}, Step: {devStepName}, StepId: {stepId}");
continue;
}
var uatAttrs = match.GetAttributeValue<string>("attributes") ?? "";
var uatType = match.GetAttributeValue<OptionSetValue>("imagetype")?.Value;
if (devAttrs != uatAttrs || devType != uatType)
{
Console.WriteLine($"[MISMATCH] Image: {devImageName}, Step: {devStepName}, StepId: {stepId}");
Console.WriteLine($" Dev Attributes: {devAttrs}");
Console.WriteLine($" UAT Attributes: {uatAttrs}");
Console.WriteLine($" Dev ImageType: {ImageTypeToString(devType)}");
Console.WriteLine($" UAT ImageType: {ImageTypeToString(uatType)}");
}
}
}
Console.WriteLine("Comparison complete.");
}
static string ImageTypeToString(int? type)
{
switch (type)
{
case 0:
return "PreImage";
case 1:
return "PostImage";
case 2:
return "Both";
default:
return "Unknown";
}
}
In some business scenarios, we might need to update the Business Process Flow (BPF) stage of a record during an Excel import — especially during data migration or bulk record manipulation. In this blog post, we’ll walk through how to set a desired BPF stage (based on the stage name) and automatically move the record to that stage using Power Automate.
We’re working with a custom Dataverse table called Test(cr1a7_test) and a Business Process Flow named My Business Process Flow, which includes the following stages:
“select processidname,stagename, processstageid from processstage where processid = [processGUID]”
Our goal is to allow users to specify the stage name (e.g., “Stage 2”) through Excel import, and have a Power Automate flow update the record’s BPF instance to the corresponding stage automatically.
For this –
We’ll add a field called the Desired BPF Stage choice field on our table to store the desired stage name.
We’ll create a Power Automate flow that triggers on create or update.
We’ll maintain a static JSON mapping of stage names to stage IDs and their traversed paths.
We’ll look up the corresponding stage ID and traversed path from the JSON.
We’ll fetch the BPF instance for the record.
We’ll update the BPF instance with the new active stage and traversed path.
Below is how we can define our JSON structure for mapping, which we will store either in a variable inside Power Automate or save as an environment variable.
Trigger – When a row is added or modified.
Initialize Variable with JSON mapping
Parse JSON – using the sample data
Use a “Filter array” action to find the object where stageName matches custom_desiredbpfstage.
Initialize variables to store the Stage ID and traversed path.
first(body(‘Filter_array’))?[‘stageId’]
first(body(‘Filter_array’))?[‘traversedPath’]
Use List Rows to check if BPF Instance exists or not, if not we will create it or update it.
length(outputs(‘List_rows’)?[‘body/value’]) > 0
Update or Create a new BPF instance associated with the record.
Below we can see the user specifying the Stage 3 value for the Desired BPF Stage column in the Excel to be imported.
Nishant Rana's Weblog 